Continuing Professor John Pearn’s article
Part 4
The first orchids scientifically named in the Pacific were species in the genus Thelymitra J.R.Forst. & G.Forst., a taxon raised and coined by the Forsters — the irascible Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–1798), and his son Georg Forster (1754–1794), who was 18 years old when they left on Cook’s second voyage of 1772 to 1775. The Forsters collected Thelymitra longifolia in the South Island of New Zealand in 1772 and published the name of the species in 1776. The Forsters described and named nine new species in what they termed the “Class of Orches” in the South Pacific. Georg Forster graduated in medicine in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1784. Species of Thelymitra, which are known as the Sun Orchids, are found mainly in the south-west of Western Australia.
It should be noted that Thelymitra are found both in the east, central and the west of southern Australia.
NOSSA 